This blog is about my personal take on current research in human evolution, including my own fieldwork

Sunday, July 14, 2013

First week at Gorham's Cave

Yesterday we completed the first week in Gorham's Cave. Much time has been spent preparing the site for excavation as we are opening old sections that were last looked at close to twenty years ago. We are also opening sections that were excavated in the 1950s and backfilled at that time. The work then was not as detailed as today so we are finding some great pieces that were missed at the time. Above is a Mousterian point, made by the Neanderthals. I'll dedicate another post to showing some of these artefacts. It is now 23 years since Geraldine and I started this project with Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum.

Above and below: After all these years, going down the cliffs and through the boulders with the team on a daily basis has become a part of Geraldine's life. The line in the image below shows Geraldine at the head of the line of archaeologists. It serves to illustrate the spectacular scale of the site.

We're concentrating a lot of effort on the Middle Sections of the cave this year. Here, Dr Ruth Blasco and Marco Antonio Bernal are hard at work cleaning the sections (above and below).

Above we see the beautifully cleaned Middle Section. Dr Richard Jennings is up on the scaffold. Behind him is the inner part of the cave where we are also working (below)

Material from here is transferred in bags down the site for dry sieving (below). Once we start on the in situ deposits - this Monday - the material will be taken to Vanguard Cave for wet sieving.

The bags are left in an intermediate location (above) before transportation to the sieving team (below). Any shade is gratefully received as the morning sun beats down. Mercifully, the cliffs provide shade in the afternoon.

It looks idyllic (below) but it is tough work

Taken from close to the sieving station, the image above shows clearly the middle section with the inner part of the cave at the top. It is truly a grand cave, 50-metres deep with an additional inner chamber that is 35-metres deep. The stratigraphy is 18-metres from top to bottom!

As well as cleaning the middle section, we are also preparing it for excavation. This part is just below the main section and will offer a wide horizontal space for excavation

It's a great team and everyone is working really hard. Well done guys!